Inventions Facts

Here you will find some really Interesting Inventions Facts. When we study the great inventions of the world, we find that they are either very simple, basic things like the wheel or very complex things like the computer. Some inventions were silly, some deadly serious, but even the inventions that were not successful were not all failures either. Each invention shed some light on the good intentions of the inventor and their quest to improve the quality of life. Here are some invention facts and myths meant to amaze, inspire and amuse you. All facts are really Surprising. Tell your friends about these Inventions Facts to surprise them.

Without the one knowing about the other, Jack Kilby from Texas and Robert Noyce from California invented the integrated circuit in 1958. However, their idea is not new - Briton GW Dummer had suggested such a design in 1952.

In 1926 in Scotland, John Logie Baird demonstrated a machine that transmits movie pictures using radio technology, calling it a "televisor." It was based on a 1884 idea by German Paul Nipkow. At the same time, Philo Fansworth was toiling away in San Francisco on his concept for television. The two men met a few months later, and Baird had to agree that Farnsworth's electronic design was the better. They weren't the only ones working on a TV model, though. Vladmir Zworykin, a Russian immigrant to New York, was working on athode-ray tubes, with the backing of David Sarnoff, the tech-savvy marketer who started NBC. In 1928, Farnsworth's television sets made it to the market first, at $75 a piece.

Gray invented the first electronic musical instrument. He had accidentally discovered that he could control sound from a self-vibrating electromagnetic circuit and in doing so invented a basic single note oscillator. The "Musical Telegraph" used steel reeds whose oscillations were created and transmitted over a telephone line by electromagnets. At the same time, around 1874, Bell had also designed an experimental "Electric Harp" for speech transmission over a telephone line using similar technology to Gray's.

The computer was launched in 1943, more than 100 years after Charles Babbage designed the first programmable device. Babbage dropped his idea after he couldn't raise capital for it. In 1998, the Science Museum in London, UK, built a working replica of the Babbage machine, using the materials and work methods available at Babbage's time. It worked just as Babbage had intended.

Bar codes were invented by Bernard Silver and Norman Woodland in 1948. Their system used light to read a set of concentric circles, but they had to wait two decades before the advent of computers and lasers made their system practical. (However, the bar code system in use today is the Universal Product Code, introduced by IBM in 1973. The first bar coded item sold was a pack of gum in 1974.)

The first parachute jump was made from a hot air balloon by Andre-Jacques Garnerinthe in France in 1793. But Leonardo da Vinci had made detailed sketches of parachutes in 1485. He also sketched studies for a helicopter, a tank and retractable landing gear. The first helicopter that could carry a person was flown by Paul Cornu in 1907. Tanks were first used during World War One in Cambrai, France in 1917. The first airplane with retractable landing gear was built in 1933. Da Vinci also suggested underwater breathing methods. Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Emile Gagnon introduced scuba diving only in 1943, 458 years later.